During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous challenges specific to educational context resulted in disrupted teaching and learning for students across the U.S. Consequently, accelerating recovery of disrupted learning has become the primary concern of every school district in the nation. Prior to the pandemic, the use of data to guide instruction was…

Many schools face barriers that hinder access to services, including limited funding and staff trained in evidence-based interventions. In particular, rural schools must provide targeted intervention to promote academic growth and narrow achievement gaps despite these barriers. One seldom-considered solution to ease the resource costs in the…

A lack of access to a sequence of introductory to top-level curricula in rural schools has widened the achievement disparity between rural and urban students and influenced the number of college degree holders in rural areas. Recently, surging diversity and differentiation in income levels across nonurbanized areas can serve as determinants of the…

Flipped learning maximizes class time and incorporates practices such as differentiation and cooperative learning to meet student's individual learning needs. Research showed this instructional model to be promising at increasing academic performance much quicker than traditional instruction. This non-equivalent groups, quasi-experimental study…

Students with disabilities have progressed in achievement compared to their general education peers, but learning gaps remain. The problem is elementary and secondary school students with disabilities have achievement gaps despite receiving specially designed instruction through an individualized education program by an intervention specialist in…

Research Findings: This national survey study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on early development of rural preschoolers in China and compare the urban-rural gap. Participants were 11,282 rural preschool teachers recruited through the stratified random sampling method. They completed the survey online via wjx.com, the…

The purpose of this study was to present, compare, and contrast data collected from rural Georgia educators concerning their beliefs and knowledge of the benefits of student retention. The researcher identified the most common areas of agreement and disagreement among educators concerning grade-level retention. Additionally, the researcher…

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted schooling, not only in South Africa, but globally. In the study reported on here we investigated the perceived psychosocial effects of the pandemic on the teaching realities of Foundation Phase (FP) educators in rural quintiles 1 to 3 schools in the North West province, South Africa. A qualitative, case…

As COVID-19 upended the lives of students around the state, schools across Wisconsin saw a troubling increase in chronic absences. This report discusses where chronic absenteeism grew more sharply in Wisconsin. The highest rates of absenteeism occurred in schools with greater numbers of students of color and from low-income households, thus posing…

Instructional leadership continues to be a focus of research due to its effectiveness in improving schools. The understanding of effective instructional leadership has shifted from being engaged in day-to-day teaching and learning to being capable of organizing and managing teachers for instructional improvement. Most instructional leadership…

Exploring students' systems thinking (ST) is essential in enhancing science learning, but existing studies have failed to understand students' ST fully as it relates to ecological issues. This study aimed to fill the aforementioned literature gap by exploring lower-secondary school students' ST regarding ecological issues. The Systems Thinking…

The purpose of this descriptive qualitative case study was to discover Second through Fifth Grade rural North Texas teacher perceptions focusing on reading and mathematics student achievement gaps resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown affected students not only academically but also socially…

About one in five students in the US attends a rural school, and over half of all school districts are in rural areas. And yet very little is known about achievement, achievement gaps, and academic growth in rural schools, including how school-year and summer changes in achievement may differ in these schools. This lack of information is…

African American males often struggle with reading motivation and reading achievement. The problem addressed in this research study was that low reading motivation in African American males is associated with low scoring on standardized and summative reading assessments. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the reading…

The problem addressed in this study was the current low retention and graduation rates of Black males at community colleges nationwide. The purpose of this causal-comparative quantitative study was to determine the effect of the Black Male Initiative (BMI) on Black males' academic self-efficacy and academic achievement scores. Academic…